


A Meeting on the Boundary

by MeanderingWits



Series: AmeChu Week 2017 [1]
Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Gen, M/M, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-03
Updated: 2017-07-03
Packaged: 2018-11-23 01:19:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11392350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MeanderingWits/pseuds/MeanderingWits
Summary: In which a fateful meeting occurs in a fateful place on a fateful summer's day.





	A Meeting on the Boundary

**Author's Note:**

> Filled for Day 1 of [AmeChuWeek 2017](http://amechuweek.tumblr.com/post/162511958141/amechuweek-welcome-to-amechuweek-2017-this) ("Hot Summer Day").

  
The long-awaited official from the Celestial Empire coated in dust and sand and sweat.  
  
Worse yet, this was high summer, on one of the stagnant days. The smell off the sea as they crossed the Pasiphae Bridge tended toward rotting seaweed and pungent brine on days like this.  
  
Alfred knew this because he was watching the whole to-do from a perch high above in the Zephyr Tower. The cyclones of magical air churned around and below him, and the large alchemical machines kept him cool, as they did the entire city via the system of pipes and channels.  
  
It was wonderful not to have to smell that stench, to be honest.  
  
He felt a little bad for the man, who had by now dismounted his horse and was choking on the saturated air and, quite likely, his own blood. The heavy and embroidered layers of silk were doubtlessly expensive, but the leyline's influence probably ruined them by this point. The woven enchantments and protections would likely start melting the fabric in a few more hours at this rate. Then it would really get suffocating for the official.  
  
The official's entourage wasn't faring much better. Actually, the official was probably handling the best out of the bunch. The air around them was beginning to shimmer in a way that didn't bode well. The changes would likely start soon for those not strong enough.  
  
A shriek pierced the air.  
  
A scream of agony. Pain. Death. Followed by ones of shock and dismay.  
  
Then there was the shouting of orders, chanting of spells, and the clanging of armor. In the gory remnants of one of the official's armored guards was now a bulbous, writhing mass of something. Something large and fleshy and bloody and hungry. It was newborn and confused, though, so Alfred knew it wouldn't give Gilbert much trouble. The newborns were generally easy to take care of. It's when they got past the barriers and to the ocean -- into the leyline proper -- where they could feed and grow and die and mutate -- that's when it was hard.  
  
Another scream. The newborn thing's this time, higher pitched and alien compared to its previous form but still piteous. The poor thing was shown no mercy by Gilbert, even as Ludwig swiftly hustled the official and the shocked visitors past the gates to safety. The ones who weren't transforming into monsters themselves, anyway.  
  
Alfred shrugged and turned back to the machines. As he did so, he chucked the wooden popsicle stick into the waste basket by the door using his left arm.  
  
A smooth arc. A clatter, right to the bottom of the bin. He still had it, all things considered after what happened six months ago.  
  
When you lived on the edge of a leyline like this, you always needed to be prepared. And if you weren't prepared, a talent for improvising may be the only thing saving you from death.  
  
He hoped this wasn't too much of a shock to the officials.  
  
Welcome to Metis, indeed.  


* * *

  
  
Yao had heard many things of this place before, but thought the rumors were exaggerated. But it seems the whispers of monsters and madmen on the edge of an ocean sparkling with magic and insanity were true. Metis -- Zhébiān (折边) in his language -- was a cursed place and humans had no right to live here.  
  
And if it weren't for his duty toward the great Emperor, he would never have gone near the place.  
  
Yet here he was. A good fifteen men fewer out of the fifty he brought with him, made into who knows what, killed at the gates of their destination.  
  
The Celestial Empire and the Western kingdoms had tended to keep to their own spheres of influence. It only made sense. The two regions were separated by mountains and rivers and vast stretches of land inhabited by nomads and desert princes and warlords in an ever evolving patchwork of states that rose and fell like the sea. His empire conquered the adjacent lands when they were weak, but were always on the look out beyond their walls in the event of a man uniting those greedy, uncivilized peoples. It had happened in the past, after all. In short, what was there to worry about the Western kingdoms? They were far away, their emissaries few and bumbling and grasping at any scrap of greatness they could bring back to their ratlike lieges.  
  
They had underestimated the West's eagerness to test the leylines, though.  
  
The Empire knew better. They had so many awful stories of what happened when one strayed too far off of the coasts, to where the waters flash-changed hue from a blue as black as the night to a blue as pale and delicate as the inside of an oyster shell in the blink of an eye, where the waves could at one moment overtake the sky above to be as calm and still as a corpse in the next instant. And that just described the environment, to speak nothing of what the leyline did to the sailors themselves. There was a reason they were known for being mad: if they weren't mad to begin with, they ended up that way. If they survived and didn't become something...else.  
  
These fools, however, decided that they needed to see what was beyond. (Or rather, that's what they said. The real reason was obvious: they wanted to bypass the desert kingdoms and get to the Celestial Empire and the southern spice lands directly.)  
  
The Emperor would've been pleased to let them die if it weren't for cities like Metis popping up in the last fifty years. Fully functioning cities on man-made islands far from the coast, connected by the most delicate series of stepstones and gossamer-like bridges. They had popped up on the coasts of the most westward the Western Kingdoms -- Albion, Gallia, Iberia, and Lusitania, for the most part, as well as some city states in Lotharingia. Presumably they would be bases from which to launch forays into the leyline sea proper.  
  
For a sage like Yao, a scholar of magic for almost one hundred years, this was just asking for a smiting from Heaven itself.  
  
Which was why he was sent here in the first place. Sure, the cover story was that Yao was a mid-level fire mage here to study how being so close to the leyline's influence affected Eastern magicks and formulas. The real mission granted to Yao, the pride of Sīyuè Province, the preeminent firecaster of the Starry Court, was to observe and gauge whether the Empire could shield itself from this folly or intervene on behalf of all of humanity.  
  
This city -- Metis, named for a goddess betrayed and murdered (a bad omen) -- was one of the few cities governed by the kingdoms collectively. Merchants and adventurers from Albion, courtiers from Gallia, priests from Iberia, knights from Niemcy -- all of them mingled and worked in a system founded on begrudging trust. The preliminary reports he read said there had been much unrest and conflict between Metis's citizens before the offspring of their collective negative energy appeared: a lightning beast intent on destroying the city. Word was that a quarter of the city had fallen before the Metis knights and mages managed to quell and kill the thing. Yao, climbing one of the rebuilt towers with the Niemcian knight Ludwig as his guide, noticed the obvious markers of the builder mages and engineers.  
  
Whoever had led the construction was skilled, Yao had to admit, but their inexperience showed. In the Empire, there were buildings made of wood and paper that had stood for thousands of years, constructed without the need for mortar or nails. The Metis engineers apparently put their faith in steel and glass.  
  
Still, the environment here was infinitely more comforting than outside Metis, and much better when compared to the area outside of the walls. Gone was the pressure to give into some other will, to lose his shape and mind and be something else that something alien to himself wanted. No, demanded. It felt almost like an exceptionally warm summer day. Yao sweated under his robes -- they would need to be replaced, the sooner the better.  
  
The spiral staircase they climbed encircled a cylinder made up of at least a foot of reinforced, rune-engraved glass, inside of which were five glass and steel pipes channeling extremely powerful wind energy from above to below. The Empire had similar towers, but nothing this powerful...  
  
Ludwig acceded to his request to meet the lead engineer, who lived and worked at the top of Zephyr Tower.  
  
Yao wasn't expecting a young man barely out of teens. In Yao's opinion, looking at the youth's tanned skin and muscles, he belonged more in the fields than in this airy tower. Unlike Ludwig and many of the other Metis citizens, he wasn't wearing much protective clothing or armor besides some enchanter's gauntlets and goggles. Just boots, simple pants, and a loose white tunic. Yao also noticed that the youth -- Alfred -- had glasses in the Noricum style. Glasses were brought to the Western kingdoms from Ausonian travelers, an aping of Celestial technology. Even on the edges of the abyss, the Empire's prowess and ingenuity could be felt.  
  
What also surprised him was that the young man was missing his left arm. In its stead was a metal facsimile: five strips of twisted, ensorcelled metal connected to his shoulder, hinged at where the elbow should be, disappearing into the aforementioned gloves.  
  
"So, Mr. Dignitary!" Alfred exclaimed after introductions. (Ludwig facepalmed in the background at the informality, and Yao privately agreed.) "You're here to see what we're doing to get across the leyline sea."  
  
Yao, discomfited, was proud to say he did not reveal his annoyance. "I assure you, we are here merely to study and observe--"  
  
"Yeah, yeah. We know. But that's not really why you're here."  
  
"Alfred," Ludwig interjected wearily. "There are protocols..." The look on his face, of weary resignation, spoke volumes on how many times things had never gone his way.  
  
"It's fine," Alfred said airily, waving a carefree hand in the breeze. "I'm just saving us a lot of dancing around the issue. Let's just get it all in the open! A really large bird from Ruscia Magna said a guy he had a fight with a long time ago was coming over here. According to that guy, this person from the Empire was one of their best." Alfred looked him over thoughtfully. Carefully. Yao forced himself not to blush under that interested blue gaze. "I've gotten into fights with that fucker before. He ain't easy to take down. It wasn't hard to figure out what you guys are up to after finding out about _you_ , Mr. Dignitary."  
  
"Fine then. As you say, let us get it all out in the open." Yao drew himself up to his full height and looked the young man -- no, this _boy_ \-- in the eye. "You plan to cross the sea...and the leyline."  
  
"Yep!"  
  
"Despite the disasters that will inevitably befall you."  
  
"Yes. We won't know what's beyond if we don't try. Something's out there, you know."  
  
Yao raised an eyebrow at that. No, he didn't believe that. Years of study across three continents agreed that only a vast, empty, awful sea lay beyond. "No, I do not know. There is nothing there."  
  
"Trust me, _something_ is there." The boy smiled enigmatically. "I plan to see it."  
  
"You have a ship that can make the journey?"  
  
"No, I don't plan to sail there," the boy said.  
  
"Then what do you intend to do? The only way is to sail!"  
  
That grin was as confident and blinding as the sun. "Fly."

**Author's Note:**

> I've had this AU brewing for awhile and, well, AmeChuWeek gives me a good excuse to actually do something about it. I haven't written high fantasy in ages, so let's see how it goes.
> 
> All my AmeChuWeek submissions will be part of this AU unless I get hit by some other darts of inspiration. Let's see how it goes.
> 
> (Just to be clear: Celestial Empire [China]; Albion [England]; Gallia [France]; Iberia [Spain]; Lusitania [Portugal]; Lotharingia [Low Countries, but the Netherlands in this context]; Niemcy [Germany]; Noricum [Austria]; Ausonia [Italy]; Ruscia Magna [Russia])


End file.
